www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Is this disturbing?

I find American style caskets somewhat revolting as well. Remember the beautiful pine box the Pope was buried in? That is the customary casket in Greece...ofcourse, if one wants to 'upgrade' a bit, it can be a highly polished wood, but the simple style is uniform.

Orthodox Wood Coffins:

http://www.desertlighthouse.net/caskets.html

http://www.kizhiwoodworks.com/premium.html

http://www.stmarksworkshop.com/id2.html

Orthodox Burial Shrouds:

http://www.monasteryproducts.org/product_info.php?products_id=1301

http://www.istok.net/church-product/burial-shroud.html

I wonder how long it will be before nearly every casket used in the US is made in China. They've just gotten into the market http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2005-07-12-caskets-usat_x.htm so I expect we'll be seeing their share of the market rise dramatically. Kind of appropriate since we are letting them bury us every where else.

Don't worry. We heard all this back in the eighties, when Japan was supposed to bury us. Now it's China. But China has so many internal contradictions and intractable problems that there is a more than even chance the country will implode before it surpasses the United States. Most serious is the looming demographic crisis, as two generations of the mandatory one-child policy come home to roost. Not only will China's population begin to contract even faster than Japan's but it will begin aging even faster than Japan's. As Mark Steyn said, "They will get old before they get rich".

China is currently having some trouble with the peasants who are abandoning the fields and seeking work in the cities, they can be set back with another distributive shock.

Actually, the problem has reversed itself with the recession: peasant workers who moved to the cities for industrial jobs are fleeing back to the countryside in such large numbers that the system cannot absorb them all.

Lawrence:

How do you figure? When people buy a casket, no matter what their ability to afford, I've never had anyone ask to go to the "scratch and dent room" like people often do when buying household appliances. People expect to get the best that can be had in their budget bracket. When merchandise has obviously faulty finishes or construction, it won't move and the people who do it right have no worry about competition.

BOB

I don't see anything odd at all about Walmart selling caskets. Americans too often have such a sanitized view of death. Look at the hymns from the Byzantine Funeral (Parastas / Panachida) and how direct they are. Seeing caskets at Walmart would not be out of line. [But I will add the stipulation that the caskets should be tastefully displayed and that Walmart never uses whatever their equivalent of K-Mart's "Blue Light Special" to push them as a loss leader!]